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WHO WAS THE BLACK SCORPION SUPPOSED TO BE, BEST BOOKS ON WWF HISTORY, ULTIMATE WARRIOR-IRON SHEIK INCIDENT AND MORE

By Mike Johnson on 2017-06-03 10:00:00

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Was Ric Flair always supposed to be the Black Scorpion?

When the character was created by Ole Anderson (Ole claimed as a joke towards Jim Herd, who was running WCW at the ring, but Herd ended up loving it), there was no set plan of who was going to portray the character. At one point, Dave Sheldon, who wrestling as Angel of Death in World Class and the UWF was going to do the role, but balked. Different performers including Al Perez and Bill Irwin would play the role on house show events, while WCW often hired magicians to do stunts at televised shows. Ole performed the voice of the character. In the end, with no other ideas, Ric Flair was revealed as the "real" Scorpion in a probably the only truly bad Flair vs. Sting match ever, as Flair worked a different style so as not to reveal himself before the unmasking.

I saw an old ECW video where Sandman was wrestling Sabu In this video, Sandman is visibly drunk. Not just drunk, but hammered!!!! Was this common in early ECW? And wouldn't this be insanely dangerous to both men?

Let's just say Sandman really lived the gimmick during that era and what you saw was exactly what you got. It was common a lot of the time. As for it being dangerous, I am sure it was.  Sandman used to claim he was safer in the ring after a few drinks. There were times where some wrestlers, including Mick Foley, would complain about his actions and from time to time, Sandman did curb himself, but ECW was a unique animal, to say the least.  It's the type of thing that likely would never happen today but ECW truly was the wild, wild west in a lot of ways.

I was going through some old wrestling message board posts and there was talk of an incident between the Iron Sheik and The Ultimate Warrior at a wrestling convention?  Any idea what happened here and whether there was any fallout?

It wasn't a wrestling convention, but a sports convention where both had been brought in by different vendors to sign in May 2006.  Here is the original story that I wrote at the time:

"There was a strange incident on Sunday involving former WWF champions The Ultimate Warrior and The Iron Sheik in Edison, NJ while both were appearing at a football/sports convention.

According to several witnesses, Sheik and Eric Simms, a New Jersey-based talent liaison that arranges signings and appearances who booked Sheik into the convention, approached Warrior at the booth he was based out of during Warrior's scheduled signing time. When Warrior saw Sheik, he demanded Sheik leave saying he wanted nothing to do with him and claimed that Sheik had said negative things about him in the past. Sheik got upset and apparently acted as if he was going to go after Warrior, going as far as to slap Simms when he tried to calm Sheik down. Warrior called for security who did approach Sheik once he returned to his own signing area, but nothing beyond that came from the incident.

Hulk Hogan and Bruno Sammartino were both also at the convention signing. For those wondering, I am told Warrior had no interaction with Hogan but did greet Sammartino."

With Mick Foley getting his hip replaced, is this step one towards Foley returning to the ring?

No.  Foley has been told by neurological experts that he should never, ever take any bumps or damage to his head ever again.

I've been thinking about reading some of the wrestling books that are out there, so where should I start?  I specifically want to know about the history of WWE.

I do a regular audio feature in the Elite section where I review different books, but my suggestion is to read the JJ Dillon, Bruno Sammartino and Bob Backlund autobiographies as well as Tim Hornbaker book Capital Revolution.

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